No Turning Back Review: Does The Prince Of Atlanta Deliver On His First Mixtape

When I was in 8th grade back at the beginning of 2017, my most anticipated project was easily Playboi Carti’s first mixtape. It wasn’t just the music that was alluring to me – it was also all the cosigns stacked around his image before a single song from the project had even dropped: A$AP Rocky signing him to be a part of the A$AP Mob, his ties to Ian Connor, his close friendships with Lil Uzi Vert and Lil Yachty, an unreleased collaboration with Frank Ocean, modeling for Yeezy Season 5, the list goes on and on. Nobody had a clue about what the mixtape would sound like sonically but everyone occupying the Soundcloud era orbit at the time was waiting on it like it was going to change something, on the strength of Carti’s brand and the names attached to it. After long delays and false promises of a release date (some things never change), the tape finally landed and didn’t owe anyone an explanation for the wait and the cosigns turned out to be the start of something that didn’t need them anymore.

That’s the specific kind of hype I kept thinking about with “No Turning Back” almost a decade later: not the music itself, but the feeling of watching a rollout get teased, pushed back, and finally delivered as I tried to figure out in real time whether the wait was the best part or the project was. Atlanta raised Pz’ has exploded on the scene as a budding superstar, specifically when he dropped his standout song “HEDIS BUSSIN’” back in July of 2025. Before he even became a rapper, he was a prominent model signing to Wilhelmina Models at 19 years old so by the time “HEDIS BUSSIN’” broke through, the runway-to-rap pipeline wasn’t even a surprise. Photographed by Hedi Slimane, cosigned by Playboi Carti and Young Thug, walking international fashion week runways, and closely tied to one of underground rap’s biggest movements this year ØWay, Pz’ has already been stamped into the game before any official project was released.

Pz’ has been promising this tape longer than most artists get away with these days and after constant speculation starting from this past January, he made the rumors official with the statement: “Tape before the summer, finna drop the hottest shit in the world.” For a project with this much runway, the pressure was never going to just be the songs. It was going to be whether the songs could survive the anticipation.

“No Turning Back” is nine tracks of an artist who has clearly already decided what city he runs and who he runs it with. In a standout song of the project “X Tape,” he’s claiming the lineage that stood before him outright: If you ain’t with gang, you ain’t YV, YSL, it’s not yours. He’d rather own the influence than pretend it’s not there and what actually separates this from a generic trap tape is the world he’s built underneath it. “No Turning Back” feels less like a collection of singles and more like dispatches from one specific block. That sense of environment, paired with infectious melodies, confident delivery, and the traditional Atlanta sound, is what makes the tape stand out.

Producer Luc1us is the connective tissue of this project, having credits on five songs and Pz’ treats him like a member of the cast saying, Luc1us and Pz’, we fuckin’ up rap. Producer Rok gets a version of the same treatment on one of my favorite tracks “Live Strong,” where this Rok on the track percussion isn’t a tucked-away tag at the top of the song, it’s baked straight into the hook and repeated like Rok is a character in the story instead of someone working behind it. Is the production revolutionary? Not really, and that limitation keeps the project from exceeding expectations and instead just surviving them. Still, it remains consistently serviceable and often genuinely fun with “X Tape” having some of the best production I’ve heard in a while and the project showcases the chemistry and trust Pz’ has with the people in the room with him.

A nitpick I have with the project is the sequencing. “Cannes” and “No Ceilings” were relatively boring for me and “Fête Feeling,” despite being a fun Afrobeat-influenced cut, sits a bit outside the project’s core sound and disrupts its cohesion. In hindsight, swapping those tracks for standouts from the EP released just days prior “B4NTB” like “TRACK MEET,” “TAMAGOTCHI,” and “KEEP IT TUCKED” might have resulted in a better listening experience and a stronger overall arc. There’s no real story the tracklist is building toward, just the same world revisited from a slightly different angle each time. One one hand, that’s part of why the recurring names like Lil’ Rokk and Dølla Gang stick and read off as important figures in Pz’s life. On the other hand, the tradeoff is that the tape rarely escalates to anything beyond what it already establishes.

That leads me to my biggest problem with the project. The tape is at its best when it forgets to be impressive for four bars and opens up at Pz’ and his fast rise to stardom. “Dis Ain't Right” opens with Pz’ calling his mom at 4 a.m. and saying good morning – a single image that says something more interesting about the lifestyle than the next forty bars about pills and drank. I love how “Live Strong” started with, I prayed for this, I prayed for this, then includes a mention of a brother who’s tired of theiving, tired of schemin’, one of the few moments in the tape where someone else’s exhaustion gets to exist instead of being collateral for someone’s flex. “Claim to Fame” has the closest thing to an unguarded line on the project, this shit bringin’ tears to my eyes, I just sent my mama and brother a band, delivered with no ad-lib standing guard in front of it.

The problem is what happens immediately after those moments, which is usually nothing. Pz’ keeps offering an honest look inside his life, yet keeps covering it back up in the same breath before the thought finishes. Pz’ possesses things that only few could own and anyone would dream about yet doesn’t bother saying anything new about owning it. “Maxfields” is the one song that breaks the pattern, and it’s not a coincidence it’s also the best song here. I had dreams of cashing out at Maxfield, now I'm stayin’ down a street from Maxfield, this isn’t a flex dressed up as vulnerability or the other way around – it’s just a clean, earned piece of writing, the rare hook on this tape built on an idea instead of completely ignored.

It’s clear that Pz’ has the ear for a world and the instinct for a real image when he lets himself reach for one. What he doesn’t have yet, consistently, is the patience to stay inside a feeling once he’s found it. The first track of “No Turning Back” opens up with, It’s hard to say where I’m headed, it’s hard to say where I’ma go, and the project often mirrors that uncertainty. To me, it paints the image of someone building a kingdom in real time, convincing enough that you believe the city exists, not quite convincing enough yet that you believe he’s already its prince, but close enough that the coronation feels more like a question of when than if.